Donkey Kong Country vs Doom vs Streets of Rage II vs The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2009
Results Round One Thursday, April 16th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis The conventional wisdom for this match was obvious: Zelda was supposed to SFF Donkey Kong to hell and back -- remember in 2004, Donkey Kong scored 13% on Zelda 1 and there was no reason to believe this match would be much different -- and Doom was supposed to win second place by default. Obviously, only half of this happened. Donkey Kong Country went out and scored 25% on Zelda. Better than 13%, but still an SFF beating. The problem here obviously is that while Donkey Kong Country more or less sucked, Doom sucked worse. Donkey Kong quite literally tried choking this match away twice, and Doom could not capitalize despite being in the perfect situation to win. I could give credit to DK for blowing leads of 460 and 300 but still surviving with the ASV, but... no. DK choked (as usual), Doom just choked worse. A lot of casual shooters underperformed in this contest, but Doom perhaps disappointed us the most. You'll be hard-pressed to find a contest entrant blow a better opportunity than this one. Beating an SFFd Donkey Kong with nothing standing in your way is just bad, and a long way off from its 2004 days. Not that beating EarthBound and getting blown out by FF6 is any accomplishment, but it still should have been stronger than an SFFd Donkey Kong. DK was the very pioneer of SFF. Even though DK got its brains beaten in by Zelda, this match helped contribute to a growing trend of leeching not skewing the results as much as we thought. This was supposed to be an easy win for Doom, but DK won instead. Mario Kart and Super Metroid didn't split at all. Et cetera. It's almost like natural strength played as big a part as leeching in this contest. Who knew? Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction ...what's that you say? There's one non-SNES title that's still going to be there to rain on Super Metroid's parade next round? We'll just see about THAT! I love the DKC series, DKC2 is one of my favorite games ever, and I'm sure much of GameFAQs feels the same way. You guys must not realize that these games were HUGE sellers at the end of the console's lifespan and that everyone and their mother is going to be voting in support of- oh, wait a minute, What's your all-time favorite 2D platform game series? * Bubble Bobble 1.93% 1755 * Castlevania 14.03% 12738 * Donkey Kong Country 5.96% 5415 * Ghosts 'n Goblins 0.8% 729 * Mega Man 18.54% 16834 * Sonic the Hedgehog 15.67% 14231 * Super Mario Bros. 43.06% 39097 **TOTAL VOTES 90799 Erm, ouch! I'd been a major supporter of getting DKC2 and Diddy Kong into a bracket before this poll result came out in (I think) mid 2007, but this really crushed my hopes for the series having any kind of strength. Now granted Mario was the worst possible opponent, and it probably gets platform SFFed by MM and Sonic somewhat as well, but come ON, to get almost tripled by Castlevania? Then Diddy himself went out and laid a rotten egg last summer to put another nail in the coffin of my DKC enthusiasm. I'm still glad to see them in this bracket, but yeah, I fully expect the results to be kind of ugly. Actually I'm so far from sold on these games right now that I'm not even positive I'd be able to take either of them over Doom 1v1, which of course means that I never gave this upset any serious consideration with Zelda being in the mix. HOWEVER, I'd sure love to be proven wrong, and you could make a case for some signs pointing to the upset... Nintendo has dominated the Contest to this point, expected SFFings didn't end up happening to Metroid and SMK, and older PC games have looked flat out awful- even Monkey Island looked downright terrible despite advancing! But nay, just can't get my hopes up. Feel free to go ahead and prove me wrong though, DKC; it would certainly help my Super Metroid pick if you could manage it! Final answer: * The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - 57.23% * Doom - 20.57% * Donkey Kong Country - 16.45% * Streets of Rage II - 5.75% Looks... pretty decent, I'd say! Next Day Review First of all, a salute to DKC and Doom for putting on such an enjoyable show for us today. I figured DK would get off to a strong start thanks to the board and the early lead didn't surprise me, but I was shocked when it continued to hold up pretty well against Zelda all the way through the opening hour. Still, DK's track record beyond the opening hours is pretty pathetic, both as a character (see DK vs Master Chief or Vercetti) and a game (Duck Hunt), and with Zelda sure to suck up so much of the Nintendo fan vote during the day, I still gave Doom an excellent shot at completing the comeback. I didn't get to see the poll when Doom had maxed out its lead above 300, but if so I think I might very well have thrown in the towel on DKC... who knew it could manhandle the late ASV and second night vote like this? In any case, got to agree with tranny- this sets up a heck of an interesting R2 Nintendo-fest, considering how we've just seen DKC hold up almost exactly as well against LttP as Super Metroid managed back in '04. And then to throw a wildcard like Mario Kart in the mix on top of it all... yikes! External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches